SVI: The jungle was evacuated.
At that time, about 300 homeless
individuals lost their place to live,
do you track their whereabouts?
Dave Cortese: That was the
most tragic thing about how the
homeless situation was handled
over recent years. We are at cross
purposes in government services,
we are not always on the same
page. The County homeless service
is considered to be the safety net
for someone with drug and alcoholic problems or mental illness. As
for housing, we have relationships with the Santa Clara County
Housing Authority. The City of San
Jose and other cities only have the
police to help maintain order and
evict people who are homeless.
Nearby to the jungle, there is a
creek which is considered a water
way by the water company. Their
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main concern was water contamination. So the City was urged by
the Santa Clara water district to
use police force to do what we call
sweeps in the Jungle. That’s what
you saw in the Jungle.
The County had a bus service with
doctors, social workers, psychiatrist, mental health workers, and
housing specialists. The homeless
people were put on to the electronic computerized enrollment system
and we created a medical file for
any newcomers with their health
and medication history.
We had completed over 300
individuals’ medical files, and
many of our workers knew most
of these 300 homeless people. We
could start the process of allocating housing for them. For the
sick and mentally ill people, we
all agreed that the jungle wasn’t

a good holding facility for them.
Anyone who is on the way to
be rehabilitated needs to be in a
more secure environment, some
kind of transitional village, like
advanced refugee villages that
some countries have created. The
villages will have garbage facilities, doctors and social workers,
showers, security, and schools for
children.
As we are in the process of
building files for these people and
trying to find housing for them,
City of San Jose Police came
along and told the people they
had to leave. After the Jungle was
evacuated, people scattered about,
and nobody knew where they went.
Now we have these beautiful files
on people, but we don’t know
where they are. They are nowhere
to be found.